Each year, virtually all secondary schools and universities prepare yearbooks memorializing the school year's events. These yearbooks contain text, graphics and photographs. The text, graphics and photographs are generated throughout the school year; however, the entirety of information is not available until the end of the school year.
Because most schools have approximately the same end-of-year schedule, the yearbook publisher receives the final release of information for many schools on the same date. Since it is desirable to publish the yearbooks prior to the ensuing summer's end, the burden placed on the publisher during the spring months is extreme.
Heretofore, the production of yearbooks has been highly labor intensive. Photographs submitted to the publisher must be re-photographed to the correct size for the space allocated on the page. The final photographs are pasted onto the page layouts by hand. The text must be carefully set to provide the correct spaces for the photographs and graphics to add later.
Therefore, a need has arisen in the industry for an efficient system for producing yearbooks.